In an effort to improve their relationship with consumers, as well as encourage repeat business, many merchants make an effort to gather information about their consumers. In some instances, merchants will gather contact information from a consumer that conducts a transaction with them, for use in providing newsletters, advertisements, offers, or other content that can potentially lead to future transactions with the consumer, and thereby more business.
However, current methods for gathering a consumer's data at a merchant point of sale are often time consuming. For example, in some methods, consumers are prompted to provide their e-mail address, phone number, or other contact information at the point of sale, after which an employee manually enters the provided information into the point of sale system. In many situations, consumers conducting transactions aim to finish the transaction as quickly as possible, and may refuse to provide their contact information as it could prolong the transaction. In addition, some consumers may be apprehensive of providing personal contact information to an employee audibly, as others in the vicinity may overhear, or the consumer may not trust the employee with the information.
Furthermore, manual input of contact information into a point of sale system is often prone to errors. For instance, the consumer may provide inaccurate information, the employee may mishear the information, or the employee may enter the information into the point of sale system incorrectly. Thus, even if a consumer is located that is willing to spend the extra transaction time to provide their contact information, and is willing to trust the employee and any others within hearing range with their contact information, the information may still be gathered inaccurately, and thus unusable.
Thus, there is a need for a technical system to provide for easier, more effective, and more secure sharing of consumer data with a merchant.